The Paris prosecutor’s office on Tuesday requested a trial at the assizes for the Swiss Islamologist Tariq Ramadan, suspected of rapes committed between 2009 and 2016 on four women, AFP learned from a source familiar with the matter. In this emblematic file of the #MeToo era, Tariq Ramadan, 59, first denied having had extramarital sexual relations before acknowledging “relationships of domination”, rough but “consensual”.
Already imprisoned for ten months
The affair, which caused the fall of this charismatic and disputed figure of European Islam, was triggered at the end of October 2017 by complaints from Henda Ayari, an ex-Salafist who became a secular activist, and “Christelle”, who denounced respectively a rape in 2012 in Paris and in 2009 in Lyon.
Between February 2018 and October 2020, Tariq Ramadan had been successively indicted for rape on these first two complainants and three other potential victims. He had been incarcerated for ten months.
Two of the victims had been identified by the police on photos and messages found on his computer, while the third, ex-escort girl Mounia Rabbouj, had accused him of nine rapes over the period 2013-2014. “Despite the repeated denials of the indicted, the judicial investigation has brought together many elements against Tariq Ramadan”, underlines the prosecution in its requisitions.
A “consensual” physical relationship but a “moral rape”
He therefore asks for a trial at the assizes for rapes on Henda Ayari, “Christelle”, Mounia Rabbouj and one of the two women identified in photos. She had mentioned during a hearing in 2019 a “consensual” physical relationship but a “moral rape”. However, she had written at the end of June 2021 to the Paris prosecutor’s office to withdraw her complaint.
The prosecution confirmed to AFP “to have requested by final indictment dated today, the indictment of the person concerned before the Assize Court of the count of rape with regard to three complainants and the count of rape on vulnerable person with regard to a complainant”, “Christelle”. “The judicial investigation did not make it possible to establish the reality of a plot as denounced by Tariq Ramadan, but rather a common awareness having allowed some to have the courage to denounce the facts of which they were victims”, notes the prosecution in its requisitions.
“It’s a clumsy poker move from the floor”
It is “an obvious satisfaction, a great and essential step forward and above all a relief to be believed by justice”, reacted Me Eric Morain, lawyer for “Christelle” and Mounia Rabbouj, requested by AFP. “It’s a clumsy gamble from the prosecution. But no one is fooled. The file has never been so fragile”, reacted Mes Philippe Ohayon, Ouadie Elhamamouchi and Nabila Asmane, three of the Islamologist’s lawyers.
The final decision of a trial rests with the two investigating judges in charge of this case.